Being an obnoxious outlier is ever so invigorating to my little selfdom. I would normally consider myself fairly easygoing and versatile, and thus I give out one-star reviews sparingly, reserving those lucky contestants for books which lack for me at least one meritorious quality, but congratulations to Le Guin for achieving this brilliant honour. There is a certain amount of attention to tedium and exasperation that must be observed in proper proportion to make it onto my list of woes without a single redeeming quality, and the Dispossessed is welcomed comfortably with open arms into a company with similar unpleasant interests. ( )

One of the best novel I have read in a long time. ( )

The first time I read this back in the 90s I thought it was great but I think I missed a lot. Now, rereading it, I find it to be an amazing and thought-provoking look not only at capitalism and anarchism, but how politics of any kind will tend toward solidification unless people continuously and actively work to keep the ideals alive and even improve on them. Good lessons here for today's democracy that is being weakened and is under threat of disappearing entirely. ( )

The philosophizing, oh the philosophizing was agonizing. I have read Le Guin's short stories, but this was my first novel. I was so bored! I despise Shevek, I did not care about the Physics, the stakes. Sadly, I was disappointed in the dullness of this novel. I think there is some (almost) fascinating dialogue happening about the implications of societal norms on ideas, culture on ideas, ideology, political morality, morality in general. I am sad that I was so bored. ( )

A book club pick :)

I have been in love with Le Guin’s writing for a very long time, and I was in love with it once again. There are beautiful lines in The Dispossessed.

“That vivid memory and the cool vast touch of the night wind awakened him. His soul came out of hiding.”

“Awe came into him. He knew himself blessed though he had not asked for blessing.”

My favourite thing about the book was following Shevek and how every chapter alternated between his past and the book’s present – Shevek’s coming of age, his evolution, and the relationships that grow and change, as his spirit finds freedom. All the pages that had Shevek and Takver in them were riveting.

To me, this was a story of exile and belonging, of leaving the world you know and coming home, of the impossibility of utopia.

I do wish that Le Guin hadn’t made this novel into an extremely long political science essay. It did not blend well with the rest. Reading about Urras and Anarres is not uninteresting; but contrasting a capitalist society with an anarchist/communist one does not feel like a useful exercise in 2023. Yes, I can tell where Le Guin is coming from describing the extreme misogyny of Urras (I’m with you there, dear author):

“If to respect himself Kimoe had to consider half the human race as inferior to him, how then women manage to respect themselves – did they consider men inferior?”

Anarres’s egalitarian society taken to extreme feels like a dictatorship to me, with a public opinion that can punish you, suffocate you, take your soul away.

The treatment of children on Anarres made me cringe, it reminded me of one of those things dictatorships love – parents can’t raise good citizens, their influence is harmful, let the state take care of this instead (and people formed by the same mold are so much easier to influence, yay). The author seemed to approve of this, and it soured the book for me. I debated the final rating with myself for quite a while.

Still, 4.0 stars it is - because Shevek was there.
( )